Friday, 16 November 2012

André da Loba

Our first class visit in New York was to see André da Loba at the shared studio building The Invisible Dogin Brooklyn.

We started by viewing the exhibition Shaboygen by Steven and William Ladd, which covered the bottom floor of the building.

These strange bead trees were my favourite feature in the room. Unlike some of the other pieces, which just looked like boxes of trinkets or decorative fabric arrangements, these had more mystery about them...perhaps more of a story to tell. I wonder why the artists chose to make these tree shapes out of the beads; were they portraying a particular scene or environment? Their formation interests the viewer and you subconsciously try and attach more of a story/purpose to them.

...followed by a lift up to the studio floor (a huge lift like none other I've ever been in!)...

...and slowly the entire group took turns to cram into André da Loba's studio, where he let us take pictures and be nosey in general...

These little men were some of my favourite things in the studio- they remind me of a papier mache wise man my dad made at school when he was little.

I could have stayed for hours in this room! It seemed like a real-life tour of André's imagination. There was so much work to see, so many creations and characters, different ideas everywhere you looked!

...Afterwards we went up to the next floor where there was another exhibition and we all got to rest our legs a little while as André gave us a performance displaying his work. We went away feeling very inspired!

Here is a video performance of his, Zeitgeist, that includes some of the same pieces.